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Robert D. Willig Biography

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November, 2006

Robert D. Willig  Biographical Summary

Robert D. Willig holds the position of Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University, where he teaches in the Economics Department and in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and serves as the faculty chair of the Masters of Public Affairs program. He served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the U.S. Department of Justice, Antitrust Division, from 1989 to 1991. Before joining the Princeton faculty in 1978, he was Supervisor in the Economics Research Department of Bell Laboratories. Willig is married and has four children. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford University in 1973, an M.S. in Operations Research from Stanford in 1968, and an A.B. from Harvard in 1967.

Willig has written, lectured and consulted widely on the subjects of industrial organization, the relationships between government and business, and domestic and international microeconomic policy. He is the author of Welfare Analysis of Policies Affecting Prices and Products, Contestable Markets and the Theory of Industry Structure, and numerous articles in the professional economics and legal literature. He is a co-editor of the Handbook of Industrial Organization, Can Privatization Deliver? Infrastructure for Latin America and Second Generation Reforms in Infrastructure Services.

Willig has served as a consultant and advisor for the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice on antitrust policy, for OECD, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the World Bank on global trade, competition, regulatory and privatization policy, and for governments of diverse nations on microeconomic reforms. He has been a visiting member of the faculty of Harvard's Institute for International Development. He has provided expert testimony to Congress, Federal administrative agencies, Federal courts, state courts, and state Public Utility Commissions on antitrust matters and issues concerning regulation and deregulation of telecommunications, transportation, energy, and other industries. He has advised many corporations on antitrust and regulatory issues, and on pricing, costing, and business organization.

Willig has been a member of the Research Advisory Council of the American Enterprise Institute, the New Jersey Governor's Task Force on the Market Pricing of Electricity, the Department of Defense Task Force on Antitrust Aspects of Defense Industry Consolidation, the National Research Council Committee on Highway Cost Allocation, the Center for International Studies and has been a member of the editorial boards of the American Economic Review, the Journal of Industrial Economics, Utility Policy, the MIT Press Series on Regulation, and the Electronic Journal of Industrial Organization and Regulation Abstracts. He is an elected Fellow of the Econometric Society and was a Director of Competition Policy Associates, Inc. and Consultants in Industry Economics, LLC.